On Monday 1 April I am sending this letter which I had prepared late in the evening of the 31st, and which is now only testimony to Israel’s determination to destroy every civil structure and every possibility of life in Gaza. Tonight they totally destroyed the Shifa hospital so that it is unrecognisable. The hospital had already been occupied and searched for two weeks, the only evidence that it was an arms depot or commando headquarters you can see in the Israeli newspapers, about ten small arms and pistols. Two photos and an Islamic Jihad flag.
If there was other evidence, total destruction certainly removes the burden of independently proving Israel’s assertion. Burden of preserving the material evidence that Israel has before the International Court of Justice, imposed on it by one of its resolutions. Without a doubt, photos or objects without context are not credible evidence.
There is still no news about the colleagues and patients confined and about whom I speak below.
Instead there are testimonies from people, including that of the director of Shifa who was there at dawn this morning, that blindfolded and tied corpses were found inside the hospital and others partially buried by the bulldozers, it is not yet known whether alive or afterwards. execution. Furthermore, there is a lack of patients who were registered before the occupation and medical personnel. Israel reports 200 dead and 900 prisoners. The local government requests a visit from an international legal investigative delegation.
The text below tells the story of Easter and what was seen happening.
Today, March 31, a statement from the Minister of Health of Gaza reached us, about the content of which there should be no doubt, given that normally what was communicated by this source has always been confirmed. The text comes to us through the National Arab Medical Association (NAAMA).
The statement is terrible but not unexpected, given that for 14 days the Shifa hospital has been the scene of siege, armed assault and around 400 executions, i.e. killings of unarmed people, in addition to the imprisonment of around 800 people, mostly deported to Israel. All of this happened inside the hospital. The forced evacuation of patients and refugees took place by directing them on the road to escape by force of gunfire. This has already been reported. What the minister of health communicates is that the remaining patients, around 100 and among the most serious and the very few remaining family members, together with 60 staff members have been moved to the human resources building, two floors without a lift, furnished with desks and chairs , since it was home to only offices, with corresponding small toilets, no medical instruments and no supply of medicines or instruments.
Below the text of the message:
Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza reached a desperate situation on day 14 of the siege!
A message from Dr Yousif Abu Al-Reech, Deputy Minister of Health, Gaza, March 31, 2024.
“It’s day 14 of the siege imposed on Al-Shifa Medical complex. Based on testimonies from the medical staff inside, the situation as follows; 107 patients, most of them are severe cases that had been in the ICU, and 60 of the medical staff have been incarcerated in an old building in the hospital that does not have the capacity to host such number of patients nor the equipment. The situation as reported by many of the staff is horrific and inhumane; no ventilation, cleaning conditions, water, nor minimum medication has been provided leading to septic wounds with white flies out of them. Doctors mentioned that they ran out of gloves so they started using plastic bags when changing on wounds which ran out as well. In addition they reported the lack of elderly diapers, especially that 30 patients are bed ridden and use diapers and in intensive need of medical care and nursing that the limited number of staff is incapable of providing. Furthermore, patients’ companions are either executed, arrested or displaced to the south by the military which add another burden on the staff. Moreover, the military is starving the besieged patients and staff with no food or drinkable water provided for days. The staff representative tried multiple times to convey their needs to the military leadership, however; he was met by violation and mistreatment. Prior to every negotiation attempt, soldiers undress him and leave him half naked for 3 hours at least before meeting the concerned officer with ‘we will look into the matter and come back to you’ response, but they never did. In light of these horrific conditions, our already exhausted medical staff started showing symptoms of fatigue and allergy and if no solution is pursued as soon as possible, the place will turn into a graveyard of patients and staff if it is not already the case.
Dr. Yousef Abu Al-Reech, MOH, Gaza, March 31st. 2024.”
The statement comes in a context that is becoming increasingly tragic, given that today the al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah, one of the 4 hospitals out of 36 still partially functioning in Gaza, suffered a military attack in the external area which killed four people, injured 12 and was headed towards the tents where the press stops to work using the hospital’s internet connection and electricity. Already 137 journalists have been directly killed in Gaza, and many injured, more than in any conflict in the last 20 years and continue to be favorite targets. This attack is too painfully reminiscent of the progressive approach that was made on all the other 32 hospitals which were then destroyed or disabled. But it’s not enough. Today also comes from Gaza a lacerating description of doctors on one of the missions who arrived 6 days ago in support of the European Hospital, one of the hospital structures still functioning, albeit with a quadrupled patient load and the corresponding difficulties in supplies. They are two American emergency surgeons who have worked for a total of 57 years in many disasters, natural and man-made.
They tell us about the hospital conditions they found in what is currently the best functioning garrison in all of Gaza. In summary they describe working in a sea of wounded and patients on the ground along walls and corridors, and with refugees camped all around, but above all by the absolute inadequacy of medical equipment, instruments and personnel, who were also exhausted from 6 months of working in emergency conditions and overwhelmed by the number of hospitalised patients; of wounds infected with maggots and of the fact that “many of these wounded are evidence of horrible violence deliberately directed at civilians and children: a 3-year-old boy hit in the head, a 12-year-old girl in the chest and abdomen by the best sharpshooters of the world”. They report the results of the use of high-yield bombs on civilians whose “impact caused the building debris to penetrate deeply into the tissues so that it is virtually impossible to clean them, and in the absence of antibiotics, they become infected and even lethal”. Compare this to their experience during 9/11, or during the Boston Marathon bombing or in Ukraine, and they say they have never seen this level of damage. They remind us that the USA has armed and continues to arm this massacre.
We remember that, except Canada, none of the countries complicit in the massacre because they offer continuous diplomatic and military support to the Israeli government and its military industries, have stopped the sale of weapons or commercial relations or support for the aggression on Gaza. We remind you that only in England was a complaint raised for the government’s failure to request legal advice, due following the resolutions of the international criminal court which to ascertain the legitimacy of supplying weapons or parts thereof and economic support to Israel in light that he is plausibly carrying out genocide.
This opinion is due because the decisions of the international criminal court are binding but it was not requested even in Italy. Meanwhile, the US, which declares great irritation because Israel is preventing humanitarian aid, has just released billions in supplies of heavy weapons, and it seems that all it wants is for people to die sated and helpless or not wanting to stop the attack on Rafah too, they build a platform to station aid at sea, yet another inefficient and much debated stopgap in the USA, as the Washington Post tells us. Meanwhile, Sissi, the Egyptian president, receives the promise of 10 billion from the International Monetary Fund as compensation for the expenses he will have to bear for Gaza, while he builds an open-air prison with walls all around juxtaposed on the border with Gaza. It seems that this will be the possible “final expulsion solution” to allow Israel to exile civilians without return, and take the land, while he says he only wants to fight the resistance to the last man. Despite the use of the equivalent of almost 2 atomic bombs dropped on the Gaza strip, he was unable to eliminate it even from the northern part of the strip after 6 months of invasion which then became a march of horrors ineffective militarily and of extreme perversion as far as we know it comes from the telegram channels of the fighters of the most moral army in the world who boast of jewels and bras taken from empty houses and which they blow up. This attitude, these rules of engagement, reflect much more than the banality of evil, and seem at the same time to be the result of and evidence of incitement to dehumanize people if Palestinian.
What do we, simple citizens of a country involved and complicit, do to change all this? The strength is in each of us and in the pressure that we will be able to put on our government to stop being an accomplice to a. genocide and outside international law.
In some countries people are starting to think about bringing government representatives to trial for failure to take action to prevent the Israeli genocide.
The paradox is that international law and agreements within the framework of the United Nations are placed on one side and many of the Western countries and their allies who founded them on the other, in clear conflict. The problem of saving Palestine is not just a Palestinian problem. And there’s no time to do it.
While it must be time that military and economic agreements with Israel, which benefit from deepening this rift, are re-evaluated in the light of the objective division of this country and severed by all the States and they decide where to stand. A large part of their populations are with the UN and international laws and are increasingly boycotting Israel. The task of states, what is required of them, is to sanction Israel, severing economic, military and research agreements. Not doing so makes them complicit in an ongoing genocide. And it would be very good for those who invest in Israel to suspend these investments. At a time when diplomacy and persuasion have become a screen, pressure becomes the only peaceful and legal tool to obtain an end to this ongoing genocide which in Gaza could very soon widen and deepen with the increase in the frequency of deaths by hunger, dehydration and treatable diseases that are already growing exponentially, and there is certainly no time to waste any longer because every hour is now counted in human lives. But not only in Gaza, this gap between states’ behavior and their own international and national institutions and laws, if not filled, creates the space for any possible devastation.
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